Letter to my future self



How to explain this mess we're in? Of course, you probably live in a mess as well, but a different mess, I hope. I was thinking of writing this letter to my daughter, but decided against it. I don't want to spoil the memory of her youth. Also, I don't want to be sentimental, which is hard enough, being a father.
It all started around Sinterklaas (remember that?). Early December, some clever virologist at Erasmus Medical Center got word of a strange virus popping up in China. A virus with different characteristics than the other known viruses. It had sprung over from animals to a human being. The first doctor to study the virus didn't survive. It enters through the lungs. Suddenly, everyone got very conscious of their breathing, if they weren't already, because of COPD, or lung emphysema etc. At least I did.
And the rest, as they say, is history.
I'm checking the John Hopkins Corona site. They're reporting 1.226.644 confirmed cases, 66.560 deaths. Are we going to ten million cases and 100.000 deaths? It would still be a fraction of the lives that were lost in the Spanish flu, but still. This is a different age. Life is more valuable.
Why am I still alive, you may wonder. Good question. We're all getting a lesson in statistics – the hard way. The chance of hospitalization at my age is 8 percent. The chance of dying at my age, without underlying vulnerabilities, is 1 to 2 percent. Luckily, – however harsh it may sound –, it is the the elderly and the weak who are going first. The elderly and the weak are getting a lesson in survival of the fittest-ism. Some of the elderly see an opportunity to leave, or at least, their families want them to see it.
I would probably not be writing to you, if it was the other way around, if the young were the first to go. I would be too scared to write, I think.
Please write back.

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